The departmental archives (Archives départementales) are the foundation of French genealogy. They hold the original civil and parish registers for every commune in their département, and most have put them online, free of charge. The catch is that each département runs its own website, so no two look exactly alike. This guide shows you how to find the right site, search it, and make sense of menus in French.
What the departmental archives hold
- Civil registers (état civil) from 1792 onward, including the ten-year indexes (tables décennales).
- Parish registers for the period before 1792.
- Census lists (recensements) for many communes.
- Military recruitment registers (registres matricules).
- Notarial records, land records (cadastre), and other series, some of them indexed.
Step 1: Find the right département
Once you have your ancestor’s commune, look it up on a map or gazetteer to find its département, then search for “archives départementales” followed by the name or number of the département. The national portal FranceArchives also lists archive services. A few large cities, such as Lyon and Strasbourg, run their own municipal archives with separate sites for local records.
Step 2: Find the online records
Look for a menu item such as Archives en ligne, Rechercher, or État civil. Within it you will usually find sub-sections for civil registers, parish registers, census, and military registers. Many sites let you choose a commune from a list, then a type of record and a range of years.
| French menu term | What it means |
|---|---|
| Archives en ligne | online archives |
| État civil | civil registers |
| Registres paroissiaux | parish registers (before 1792) |
| Naissances / Mariages / Décès | births / marriages / deaths |
| Tables décennales | ten-year indexes |
| Recensements | census lists |
| Registres matricules | military recruitment registers |
| Commune | town or village |
| Années | years |
Step 3: Use the tables décennales first
If you know the commune and roughly when the event happened, open the tables décennales for that decade. These alphabetical indexes list every birth, marriage, or death by surname and give the date and act number, so you can jump straight to the right page of the register instead of reading every entry.
Step 4: Browse the register
- Open the register for the right commune and year, then use the page viewer to move through the images.
- Zoom in and use the contrast tools. Handwriting is often easier to read when enlarged.
- Note the cote (the archive’s reference code), the year, and the image number, so you can cite the page and find it again.
- Download or screenshot the image if the site allows it, and save the source information with it.
What to know before you search
- Time limits differ. Each département decides how old a record must be before it goes online. A common pattern is births after 100 years, marriages after 75, and deaths after 25, but check the site.
- Some require an account. A few archives ask you to create a free account to view images.
- Coverage varies. A département may have digitized its births but not its census, or one commune but not another.
- Indexes are uneven. Many registers are browsed page by page rather than searched by name, which is why you need the commune.
When the free route is not enough
If you do not know the commune, or you want to search a name across the whole country, the departmental sites are the wrong tool, because they are organized by place. A name index helps: MyHeritage provides one for French civil and church records through its Filae collections, and Geneanet and FamilySearch offer indexes for some collections. Our comparison of French genealogy sites explains how to combine them with the free archives.
If you do not yet have a commune, start with our guide to finding your ancestor’s commune of origin. And if an act is hard to read, see our guide to reading old French records.
Illustrative composite (not a real family): A researcher in Texas knows her ancestor was born in 1868 in a commune in the Doubs. She opens the département’s archive site, selects the commune and the decade, finds the surname in the table décennale, and goes straight to the birth act, saving the image number for her notes.
For the broader research path, return to our complete guide to tracing French ancestry.
Troubleshooting your search
- The commune is not listed. It may have merged with a neighbor, so look for its older name or the present commune that absorbed it.
- The years you need are not online. Check the access rules for the record type, or write to the archives or mairie for a copy.
- The viewer is slow or fails. Try another browser, clear the cache, or return at a quieter time of day, as some archives have heavy traffic.
- The site is only in French. Use your browser’s built-in translation, and rely on the menu table above.
Save and cite what you find
Every time you open a register, save the image or take a screenshot, and record the archive, the département, the commune, the record type, the year, and the image number, along with the cote. Archives reorganize their sites from time to time, and a link that works today may not work next year, but the reference code and image number let you find the page again. If you later cross-check against an index on MyHeritage or FamilySearch, note which source gave you which fact.
Writing to an archive: a model message
If you need something that is not online, a short, polite email in French gets better results than English. Here is an example using a fictional person, which you can adapt:
Je mène des recherches généalogiques sur ma famille. Je souhaiterais obtenir une copie intégrale de l’acte de naissance de Jean DUPONT, né le 12 mars 1885 à Lure (Haute-Saône). Je vous remercie par avance de votre aide.
Cordialement,
(Your name and address)
In English: I am researching my family history and would like a full copy of the birth act of Jean Dupont, born March 12, 1885, in Lure (Haute-Saône). Thank you in advance for your help. Include the full names, the date or date range, the commune, and your postal address, and say whether you will accept a scan.
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